Carl Edwards

Kevin Harvick passed Denny Hamlin with 11 laps to go, then held on to win the NASCAR Sprint Cup series race at Michigan International Speedway. Harvick's No. 29 team gambled by staying on the track instead of making a pit stop during a late caution. It paid off with a momentum-building victory Sunday for the series points leader. This is Harvick's third win of the season and his first this year on a nonrestrictor plate track. Hamlin finished second, followed by Roush Fenway Racing drivers Carl Edwards, Greg Biffle and Matt Kenseth.

Kurt Busch has captured the pole for NASCAR's Sprint Cup race at Kansas Speedway, reversing a decade of bad qualifying luck at the 1.5-mile track. Busch topped the leaderboard at 174.752 mph in his No. 22 Dodge on Saturday. He had never started higher than seventh in 10 career starts in Kansas. Juan Pablo Montoya will start second in Sunday's race, followed by Kyle Busch and Brian Vickers. Joey Logano is fifth and Jamie McMurray, who grew up in nearby Joplin, Mo., and visited the tornado-ravaged town Thursday, will start sixth.

Kurt Busch has won the first road course race of his career with a dominating performance at Infineon Raceway. Busch led a race-high 75 laps and beat Jeff Gordon by almost 4 seconds for his first victory of the season. It marked a total turnaround for Busch and his Penske Racing team, which struggled mightily last month and made behind-the-scenes personnel changes to adapt. Carl Edwards finished third Sunday, followed by Clint Bowyer and Marcos Ambrose. The race featured several on-track flare-ups, most notably Brian Vickers' payback spin of Tony Stewart.

Jimmie Johnson has won the pole for Saturday night's race at Bristol Motor Speedway. The four-time defending NASCAR champion turned a lap at 123.475 mph in Friday's qualifying to put his Chevrolet on the front row. Johnson bettered Carl Edwards, who earned the second starting spot with a lap at 122.937 in a Ford. Joey Logano has qualified third in a Toyota. Tony Stewart qualified fourth and David Reutimann bounced back from a bout with food poisoning to qualify fifth.

Kyle Busch won the inaugural Sprint Cup race at Kentucky Speedway on Saturday night, pulling away from Jimmie Johnson on a restart with three laps to go to collect his 99th NASCAR series victory. Busch won the Trucks race here on Thursday night and had little trouble finding his way to Victory Lane for the second time in three days at the 1.5-mile oval. He started from the pole and dominated long stretches of the 400-mile race to pick up his third Cup win of the season. David Reutimman slipped past Johnson to finish second.

El colombiano Juan Pablo Montoya logró el viernes la primera posición de largada para la prueba de la Copa Sprint de NASCAR en el autódromo Richmond International tras concretar una vuelta a 206 kph (128 mph). Es la segunda pole position para el colombiano esta temporada y la primera que logra en un circuito corto, de tres cuartos de milla o 1.200 metros. Además, es la séptima en su carrera. Regan Smith quedó segundo para la prueba de la noche del sábado, en la mejor posición de su carrera.

NASCAR says Kevin Harvick has clinched at least a wild-card berth in the 12-driver Chase for the Sprint Cup championship. Harvick was not listed among drivers who had clinched after Saturday night's race at Bristol because there are still scenarios where he could fall outside of the top 10 in points. Further review Monday by NASCAR determined his three victories this season have earned him at minimum one of the two wild cards. Kyle Busch, Jimmie Johnson, Matt Kenseth and Carl Edwards officially clinched berths on Saturday night.

Tony Stewart won another round in the NASCAR Chase for the Sprint Cup championship, edging points leader Carl Edwards on Sunday in the "Texas Title Fight" to close the gap with two races left. Stewart raced to his second straight victory, and fourth in the eight Chase races, finishing just ahead of Edwards at the 1½-mile, high-banked track. Stewart cut his points deficit from eight to three with a winning margin of 1.092 seconds. The series returns next week to Phoenix, where the track has been reconfigured and resurfaced since Edwards and Stewart finished 1-2 there in March in the third race this season, and then to Homestead-Miami Speedway for the finale.

For the thrid time in as many spring races at Richmond, Kyle Busch takes the checkered flag. He beat his teammate Denny Hamlin by a second and a half. It's the tenth time JGR has finished one two. The two Joe Gibbs racing teammates were the class of the field. Thrid place Kasey Kahne was 10 seconds back. David Regan, and Carl Edwards round out the top 5. "This is pretty awesome," said Busch. "It's so fun to win these Sprint Cup races. This race tonight was a good one. We had a pretty good car and we knew if we can work through traffic better than the 11, we would have a shot at a win. " The run was the first top five for Hamlin since Texas last fall.

With Daytona in the rear view mirror, it's time to race off to Phoenix. This will be the first race that we really get to see who is going to have something for this year's championship. Daytona is fun, but it is what it is, it's own animal. Restrictor plate racing is an x-factor. Starting this week in Phoenix and really more so next week at Vegas, you really start to see who has the chops to run with the big boys. But there is a twist. The new point system, playing catch up is going to be tougher than ever.